\chapter{Introduction}
\label{chap:intro}
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Just to say what this is not:

\begin{itemize}
  \item This is not a course in the rules and deadlines of UiB. Answers to these questions you can get by asking your fellow students, your supervisor, your student counselor, or even betting, figuring it out yourself (granted, it requires some detective skills to extract useful information from the University web, but as aspiring scientists, it should be a surmountable task). 
  \item This is not a solution manual / installation guide to anything. In almost all cases you will not find the full answer on how to do this or that. Hopefully this leaflet will provide a start, an inspiration on where to look and the odd useful tip.
\end{itemize}


\section{System requirements}
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This course aims to be platform independent, but the author still admits to an inclination for Linux. Other sympathies will also be apparent, such as LaTex over Word, vim over emacs, python over matlab, inkscape over xfig etc. The course does not require that you share my prejudice, but where we go further into the tools, I will use the former as examples. 
